Well, it's that time again. I'm getting the itch to fly. After giving over 150 presentations about my trip around the world and joining the Earthrounders meeting in Mexico City in November 2005, it's time to start the planning again. The next Earthrounder's meeting will be in Cape Town, South Africa in early 2008.... so, I need to figure out how to get my Mooney there.
The broad brush approach is complete in my head. I'll head south to Brazil and cross to west Africa. Depending on timing I'd like to tour around some countries in South America; however, I don't know when I'll be ready to depart nor exactly when the meeting will be held in South Africa. So I'll get into those details later. I'll look into which countries I'd like to visit while traveling around the west coast of Africa on my way south. But, I don't think I'll be making too many stops.
After the meeting in South Africa, I'd like to visit Madagascar. I flew over it last time and really wanted to stop and visit (but couldn't take the time due to an appointment in South Africa). This trip I'll make the time. It was a French colony and I speak French, so I should be able to get around ok. Also, I've heard that it's a fascinating country with friendly people and an interesting history. I also tried to get a permit to land in Mauritius last trip, but it never came through. I'll try again as I have friends there. In order to avoid India (only for permit and bureaucracy problems) and Sri Lanka (dur to terrorist actions), I'm going to look into avgas availability in the Maldives. They didn't have any last trip, but I sure would like to visit those islands and do some scuba diving. Then I'll head to Thailand (where I have friends) and Vietnam (which I understand is developing very well on many fronts).
After that, it's a tossup around Asia and Russia to Alaska or head southeast through the Pacific Islands.... I'd love to do both, but that's not practical. I'm a little partcial to trying Taiwan, China, Japan, and Russia. I'd want to be in Alaska by late August and head south rapidly. This straight line approach looks like about 24,000 nautical miles or 170 flight hours. With more specific victor airway routing and some side trips, I'm sure we'll end up over 30,000 nautical miles and closer to 220 to 250 flight hours.
OK, a little reminder about lessons learned from the first trip. Plan, plan some more, and plan in detail. The better the planning, the easier the trip. After this broad brush approach I need to sit down with an atlas and get into the details. The planning was fun last trip and I'm already starting to anticipate the enjoyment of this planning and trip.
At Oshkosh 2006 I already started looking into a different tanking technique. Hopefully a bladder tank in the back seat will fit, get approved, and give me more internal room than last time. Insurance is going to be much more important this trip. Many countries have changed their laws; that's why I won't be going through Europe with a liability insurance requirement of $5 million.
If anyone has any contacts in Russia, China, or other countries in Asia; please let me know. That's going to be the most difficult part of the planning and I'll take all the help I can get.